“That’s him, Sarge.”
“All that happened three years ago,” Benton protested. “I hit this tree up in the hills.”
“Sure you did — one of those white painted ones.” The sergeant smiled blandly and went to one of the county cars to use the radio.
An ambulance wheeled into the emergency drive and touched its horn, the siren winding down. Benton’s truck was slightly in its path and Michaels got in quickly to move it away.
Benton hacked off a pace, and then another. A car followed the ambulance up the drive and the third cop watched it as Benton turned and went between two parked staff cars and kept going. He figured that if he had a thirty-second lead he might make it, adrenalin pumping through his system like tap water.
Moss’s garage was empty and Benton took it hard, nearly ready to quit, to give it up. He’d come two miles from the hospital, mostly through brush and trees. He looked like what he was, an escapee, scratched, torn, and bleeding. His bandaged hand pulsed with pain.
A light was on in Moss’s kitchen, and even from the foot of the drive he could hear music. He walked up to the side door and found it open. The music was deafening, a full-volume roar. Benton shouted, “Mrs. Moss!” but got no answer.
He went through the kitchen and down a hall, tracking the source of the sound. It was in a den/alcove off the living room, a stereo set-up, a long-playing tape on a reel the size of a bike tire. He switched it off; it would be unbearably ironic if a neighbor called the cops to complain. The silence was sudden and sweet. He called Mrs. Moss’s name again, but got no response. It was after eleven. Cautiously now, a true thief in the night, he crept down a long hall, looking through doors. In the room at the end he saw Moss on his face on the floor. His wife had flown the coop, not the man, but an icy question loomed in Benton’s mind: was he just drunk, or dead? Had the McCords been here already? Benton didn’t really want to know, or even to touch the fat little man, but he had to. Delicately, with the toe of his shoe, he prodded a thigh, and heard the prone figure mumble, “O.K., Emily, O.K.”
Moss was sick in the bathroom, and then demanded a Bloody Mary, said he wouldn’t talk without one, so Benton made him one in the kitchen, brought it back, and watched him empty it in one long swig. The effect was magical — a stagey sigh, a contrite little-boy smile playing around the lips. But it didn’t pick him up on the real world.
“What I want to know,” Benton growled, all his patience gone, “is this: if they set me up for Carswell s murder, how come they tried to kill me?”
Moss belched and smiled proudly — no longer sick, but drunk again. “Kill one, kill two,” he said foolishly, sitting on the john. “You don’t know it, old sock, but you signed a ten-year lease on your property yesterday. Or was it the day before? What time is it?”
“I did what?”
“Well, O.K., I did it for you — free service of Moss Realty, twenty-five years in one location, forgeries a specialty. I’ve lied before.”
Benton saw a glimmer of light. “Harry, you knew they were gonna kill Carswell, didn’t you?”
Moss giggled.
“Listen, they tell you everything. They like you to know exactly what they got in mind, the McCord boys. Special technique they got to scare the hell out of you. Why aren’t I in San Francisco by now?”
“Your wife probably is. She took the car.”
Moss reacted. He might be about to rejoin the real world, sweat marking his return.
“They used my truck to sideswipe Carswell’s car, just enough to leave some paint,” Benton went on. “But you knew that too, didn’t you, Harry?”
“Not for sure. I didn’t wanna believe it. There was a lot of stuff I didn’t wanna believe.”
“Then they ran Carswell s car over the edge with his body in it. Tonight, Harry.”
“Tonight?” Harry’s surprise seemed genuine. “That was dumb,” he said. But he had an overriding interest and thrust out his glass. “ ’Nother.”
“Not now. So yesterday they made you draw a ten-year lease on my place and forge my signature on it.”
“With mineral and timbering rights — Tom, please!”
“So they could continue hunting gold even if I wasn’t back in jail for Carswell’s murder, or even if I was dead — preferably dead. Which you knew too. You knew they planned to kill me when they made you forge the lease—”
“No — not for sure.” For a moment Moss’s round face seemed sober and sincere. “Not even at all. I figured I was next, I knew too much. I was running from them, not you.”
Benton sighed wearily, his hand banging away like a drum. He’d seen only three of the McCords, but he understood Moss’s fear of them and even felt some distant sympathy for the dead Carswell. A dog shouldn’t run with wolves; when they’re hungry they eat him first.
“Hamp told them he’d salted the place,” Moss mumbled, “but they didn’t believe him. He was trying to get rid of them and they knew it. They figured he wanted the gold for himself, so they figured they had to kill him—”
“And figured to pin it on me.”
“Tom, I gotta have another drink!”
“Later, Harry.”
“I should be on a plane for Hawaii by now. You’d make a lousy steward.” Moss was capable of some self-mockery, but not much. His need was primal, the glass held out like a beggar seeking alms.
Benton raised his hand again to reduce the pain. The bandage showed a growing stain of blood. He said, “I’m gonna call the cops now, Harry. I want you to tell them what you’ve told me, plus all the missing details.”
“A drink first, for God’s sake!”
“When you’ve gotten started with them. I don’t trust you, Harry.”
Moss slumped and Benton got up and went to the kitchen to use the phone and make another drink. On his way, the front doorbell rang and he angled across the living room to answer it, switching on the light as he opened the door. A cop stood on the porch, smiling. He said, “We got this call about some loud music—” Then his smile faded, he backed away a pace and drew his gun. “You’re Benton,” he said.
Benton nodded tiredly. “I was just about to—”
“Put your hands behind your head,” the cop snarled, “and shut up.”
Charley Hoskins lit a cigarette, sipped at his hot coffee, and watched his wife Eleanor and her sister Bessie begin to clear the table. His eyes reported that they were a good-looking pair of women, but Benton had conceded that long since. He was waiting now for something else, the rest of the story. He said eagerly, “So tell me, Charley.”
Hoskins blew smoke at the ceiling and glanced at the kitchen door. “Well, Monday evening when you got back from Folsom,” he said, “it got complicated. They had Carswell locked up in the house with his hands and feet bound. Moss had been there and gone after writing up that last offer to buy and forging the ten-year lease — and with his instructions to bring you out the next morning.”
“The ten-year lease was their contingency plan.”
“Yeah, sort of. But they had just one basic plan — to get control of the property and get rid of Carswell, hopefully in that order.” Hoskins sipped again at the coffee. Dishes rattled in the kitchen. “They didn’t really plan to kill Carswell until later — just in case you accepted the offer to buy. They’d need his money to complete that — but they’d already planned to hang his killing on you.”
“And when that looked shaky,” Benton said, “their fall-back plan was to kill me and rely on the lease.”
“Yeah,” Hoskins said. “But what really screwed things up for them was Carswell breaking loose early Tuesday morning and damn near getting away, beating up his car in the process and killing himself.”